The Americas

The Western Hemisphere encompasses an astonishing range of landscapes, cultures, and natural wonders — from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu and the unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands to the colonial grandeur of Buenos Aires, the revolutionary streets of Havana, and the raw, ice-sculpted wilderness of Antarctica. AIMS Travel's Americas programs were built for travelers who wanted more than the standard beach resort: these were journeys of genuine discovery, combining cultural depth, wildlife encounters, and landscapes of world-class drama.

Peru & Machu Picchu

11 days — Lima, Cusco, Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca

Peru is one of the world's great travel destinations, and this eleven-day program explores the full arc of its extraordinary heritage — from the sophisticated pre-Columbian civilizations of the Andes to the living indigenous cultures of the Sacred Valley and Lake Titicaca. The tour opens in Lima, Peru's coastal capital, where travelers explore the superb Larco Museum (one of the finest collections of pre-Columbian gold and ceramics in the world), the colonial historic center, and the celebrated restaurant scene that has made Lima one of South America's culinary capitals. The program then ascends to Cusco, the former capital of the Inca Empire, where travelers acclimatize to altitude while exploring a city whose colonial Spanish architecture is literally built on Inca foundations — enormous stone walls fitted together with extraordinary precision without mortar.

The Sacred Valley, stretching northwest of Cusco, contains a series of Inca sites including Ollantaytambo (a perfectly preserved Inca town and fortress) and the Pisac market, where indigenous vendors sell textiles and crafts in a tradition that predates the Spanish conquest. The climax of the program is Machu Picchu — the fifteenth-century Inca city perched on a ridge above the Urubamba River, rediscovered in 1911 and now recognized as one of the world's most spectacular archaeological sites. The tour concludes at Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake, with a visit to the Uros floating reed islands and the island of Taquile.

Ecuador & the Galapagos

14 days — Quito, Amazon, Galapagos Islands

The Galapagos Islands constitute one of the most extraordinary wildlife destinations on earth — the living laboratory that shaped Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and still home to species found nowhere else in the world. AIMS Travel's fourteen-day Ecuador program combined several days in continental Ecuador with a full week-long Galapagos expedition. In Quito, one of the world's best-preserved colonial city centers (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), travelers explore Jesuit churches of baroque exuberance, the historic center's narrow cobblestone streets, and the famous equator line at the Mitad del Mundo monument. An optional two-day Amazon excursion into the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve offers encounters with river dolphins, anacondas, macaws, and the dense biodiversity of the upper Amazon basin.

The Galapagos week is the undisputed highlight: a small expedition vessel visits multiple islands, each with its own distinct character and wildlife. Giant Galapagos tortoises, marine iguanas (the world's only sea-going lizard), blue-footed boobies, flightless cormorants, Galapagos penguins, frigatebirds with enormous red gular pouches, sea lions entirely indifferent to human presence — the wildlife encounters are unlike anything possible elsewhere on the planet. Snorkeling among sea turtles and hammerhead sharks in the crystalline Pacific waters adds another dimension to an unforgettable program.

Costa Rica

10 days — Cloud forest, volcanoes, Pacific coast, wildlife

Costa Rica punches well above its weight as a travel destination. Despite its small size, it contains an extraordinary 5% of the world's known biodiversity, packed into landscapes that range from misty cloud forests to active volcanoes to Pacific mangroves. AIMS Travel's ten-day program balanced wildlife-focused experiences with cultural encounters and genuine relaxation. The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve is among the world's premier birdwatching destinations, with resplendent quetzals, three-wattled bellbirds, and more than four hundred other species recorded in its cool, moss-draped canopy. Arenal Volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the Americas, provides a dramatic backdrop for hot spring bathing and jungle hikes. The Pacific coast offers sea turtle nesting sites, crocodile river tours, and the remarkable wildlife density of Manuel Antonio National Park, where white-faced capuchins, sloths, and scarlet macaws are reliably encountered at close range.

Argentina & Brazil

15 days — Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls, Rio de Janeiro (optional Carnival)

South America's two largest and most cosmopolitan nations combine beautifully in a single fifteen-day program that moves from the cultured elegance of Buenos Aires to the thunderous spectacle of Iguazu Falls to the samba-inflected exuberance of Rio de Janeiro. Buenos Aires is one of the world's great cities: a European-influenced metropolis of wide boulevards, bookshops, tango halls, and steakhouses, with a passionate attachment to culture, conversation, and late-night dining. The program includes a tango show in San Telmo, a visit to the colorful La Boca neighborhood, and an excursion to an estancia (traditional cattle ranch) for an authentic asado (Argentine barbecue).

Iguazu Falls, straddling the Argentina-Brazil border, is one of the world's great natural wonders — wider than Niagara and taller than Victoria Falls, the 275 cascades of Iguazu can be experienced from both sides, with walkways that bring travelers to within meters of the roaring water. From Iguazu the group flies to Rio de Janeiro for the final chapter: Christ the Redeemer (viewed from both the summit and from Sugarloaf Mountain), Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, the vibrant Santa Teresa neighborhood, and, for travelers who plan their visit accordingly, the electric spectacle of Carnival.

Cuba

10 days — Havana, Trinidad, Vinales, Cuban history and culture

Cuba is one of the Western Hemisphere's most fascinating and photogenic destinations — a country that has preserved an extraordinary time capsule of 1950s architecture and street life alongside a rich tradition of music, dance, visual art, and revolutionary history. AIMS Travel's ten-day Cuba program was designed as a genuine cultural encounter rather than a beach holiday: travelers spent time with Cuban musicians, artists, historians, and ordinary residents in a program that tried to convey the complexity and humanity of Cuban society. Havana's Old Town (Habana Vieja), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a treasure of colonial architecture in various states of elegant decay and careful restoration. The Malecón seafront promenade, the Museum of the Revolution, the Colon Cemetery, and the lively music scene of bars and casas particulares rounded out the Havana experience. The colonial city of Trinidad, one of the best-preserved Spanish colonial towns in the Americas, and the dramatic limestone mogotes (flat-topped hills) of the Vinales Valley provided contrasting rural and historical perspectives.

Antarctica

12 days — Drake's Passage, Antarctic Peninsula, penguins, icebergs, expedition cruise

Antarctica is the adventure of a lifetime — the last true wilderness on earth, a continent of staggering, almost incomprehensible scale where nature operates entirely on its own terms. AIMS Travel's twelve-day expedition program sailed from Ushuaia, Argentina (the world's southernmost city), across the legendary Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula. The Drake can be challenging, but crossing it is itself part of the experience — the sense of having traveled beyond the edge of the mapped world is genuine. Once in Antarctic waters, Zodiac landings on rocky beaches bring travelers face to face with colonies of hundreds of thousands of penguins (Adélie, chinstrap, and gentoo), Weddell and leopard seals hauled out on ice floes, and humpback and minke whales feeding in the nutrient-rich waters. The scale of the icebergs — some the size of cathedrals, glowing in shades of blue that have no name — is impossible to adequately describe to someone who has not seen them. Expedition naturalists and historians accompanied the group throughout, providing context and expertise that transformed extraordinary sights into a genuine education in natural history and polar exploration.